BUENOS AIRES 273 



resumed its progress, even before the political unity 

 of Argentina was re-established, and has never since 

 relaxed. Its population has doubled almost regu- 

 larly at intervals of fifteen years : 177,000 in 1869, 

 433,000 in 1887, 663,000 in 1895, and 1,575,000 in 

 1914. The latter figure, in fact, is inadequate. 

 Greater Buenos Aires, including the outlying parts, has 

 really 1,990,000 inhabitants. 



The site on which the city is built is a regular plateau, 

 sixty-five feet above sea level, cut by flat-bottomed, 

 marshy valleys. The Riachuelo, at the mouth of one 

 of these valleys, provided Buenos Aires with its first 

 port. The low and badly drained lands of the valleys 

 are occupied by the poorest quarters. Their sides, 

 the barrancas, bear the aristocratic residences, and 

 the gardeners have been able to use the sites to great 

 advantage in their plans. 



As a whole, the growth of Buenos Aires presents 

 the same feature of regularity, on account of the 

 uniformity of the soil, as the spread of colonization 

 over the plain of the Pampas. The city is distributed 

 in concentric zones, and it is thus a model on a small 

 scale of tne distribution of the various types of 

 exploitation on the Pampa which surrounds it. The 

 central nucleus, the business quarter, contains not 

 only the offices, but the warehouses of imported 

 goods. Round this centre, with a radius of one to 

 three miles, are the residential quarters in which the 

 density is greatest (250 to 350 to the hectare). 

 Beyond this the density sinks to less than 200 per 

 hectare and less than fifty on the outskirts. The 

 central quarters developed the maximum density 

 after 1900. Those of the first outer zone have gained 

 greatly between 1904 and 1909. Since the latter 

 date, the progress of these quarters has been arrested 

 in turn, and the recent growth is mainly in the 

 remote working-class suburbs in the south and on 

 the bank of the Riachuelo. 



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